You have shown me
the work of the real artificer-artisan. Genius! This is something more
than genius. It transcends genius. It is truth gone mad. It is true,
man, every line of it. I wonder if you realize that, you dogmatist.
Science cannot give you the lie. It is the truth of the sneer, stamped
out from the black iron of the Cosmos and interwoven with mighty rhythms
of sound into a fabric of splendor and beauty. And now I won't say
another word. I am overwhelmed, crushed. Yes, I will, too. Let me
market it for you."

Brissenden grinned. "There's not a magazine in Christendom that would
dare to publish it--you know that."

"I know nothing of the sort. I know there's not a magazine in
Christendom that wouldn't jump at it. They don't get things like that
every day. That's no mere poem of the year. It's the poem of the
century."

"I'd like to take you up on the proposition."

"Now don't get cynical," Martin exhorted. "The magazine editors are not
wholly fatuous. I know that. And I'll close with you on the bet. I'll
wager anything you want that 'Ephemera' is accepted either on the first
or second offering."

"There's just one thing that prevents me from taking you." Brissenden
waited a moment. "The thing is big--the biggest I've ever done. I know
that. It's my swan song. I am almighty proud of it. I worship it. It's
better than whiskey. It is what I dreamed of--the great and perfect
thing--when I was a simple young man, with sweet illusions and clean
ideals. And I've got it, now, in my last grasp, and I'll not have it
pawed over and soiled by a lot of swine. No, I won't take the bet. It's
mine. I made it, and I've shared it with you."

"But think of the rest of the world," Martin protested. "The function of
beauty is joy-making."

"It's my beauty."

"Don't be selfish."

"I'm not selfish." Brissenden grinned soberly in the way he had when
pleased by the thing his thin lips were about to shape. "I'm as
unselfish as a famished hog."

In vain Martin strove to shake him from his decision. Martin told him
that his hatred of the magazines was rabid, fanatical, and that his
conduct was a thousand times more despicable than that of the youth who
burned the temple of Diana at Ephesus. Under the storm of denunciation
Brissenden complacently sipped his toddy and affirmed that everything the
other said was quite true, with the exception of the magazine editors.
His hatred of them knew